10 Random Facts about the Sisters Black
by MadClairvoyant
Summary: Once upon a time there were three sisters. Then, there weren't. Companion fic to '15 Random Facts about the Brothers Black'


1. Words had power. A curse, a spell, a charm, an epithet, a cruel blow. Names more so. Bellatrix meant female warrior. And so she was, a fierce fighter, dangerous till the end, living a thankless life and dying a worthless death. Andromeda was named for a chained princess, dooming her to a life of eternal torment, seeking to run away from the unyielding grip of her family and name, but haunted and trapped by each at every turn. Narcissa, like the delicate and fragile flower that she took her name from, was every bit like it, from its elegance, to its frail bloom; it's beauty laid in the knowledge that it was to die.

2. Amongst the three of them, Bellatrix was the most beautiful, and most like the Blacks. Her long, thick shining hair was wild, her sharp grey eyes set, heavily hooded, in the middle of her patrician face, with a straight nose and high cheek bones. She was like a flame; bright, burning, and mesmerizing, luring in you in until you were close enough to be burnt, before reducing you into a pile of ashes.

3. Andromeda's favourite thing to say to Bellatrix was that should she chop off her black locks, she would look just like their eldest cousin. That annoyed her to no end, and the younger girl often assumed that it was because her sister loved her beauty and how useful it was. What Bellatrix never said, however, was that secretly, deep down in her heart, she hated how she was always second best to a boy, so much younger than her. She believed herself more intelligent, more cunning, more powerful, and resented him for taking away what was rightfully hers, just because she was a girl.

4. On that note, she had always loved and hated Sirius in equal parts, torn between loving him for his madness and brilliance, and hating him for so casually throwing away what she fought hard for in her entire life. Then again, there was a fine line between love and hate, and the insanity that had begun to cloud her mind blurred it too much for her to distinguish between the two.

5. Bellatrix's favourite thing to say to Narcissa, in her apoplectic fits of rage, was that she was a pathetic slip of a girl who didn't deserve their company. She would ridicule her for her light blonde hair and round blue eyes, her lack of fire and power; things that she had inherited from their weakling of a mother. Narcissa would smile coldly, biting her tongue in fury but not daring to contradict her sister, and pretend that she had gotten used to the insults and it didn't matter anymore. But the truth was, it did. No matter how many times Bellatrix hurled the same lines at her, it always hurt, because deep, deep, down, she knew it was true, and it hurt her terribly that no matter how hard she worked, she was never good enough.

6. Muggle culture was something disgusting and forbidden in their household, hidden in old, dusty corners with strange shadows that swallowed light and caught in the cobwebs with hundreds of secrets of other little girls that had wandered these halls and haunted these rooms. But when they were younger, in their pre-Hogwart days, dressed in the white, demure nightgowns of their childhood, they would sit in the library and giggle over the books they found about mythology. Of all the gods and goddesses, Hecate was the favourite of the three; she was the goddess of magic, something the flowed in their very veins and made them more than muggle, something dark and powerful that they were not yet allowed to take control of; something sweet and intoxicating. In her later years, Andromeda would find out so much more about her; that she was also the goddess of the fickle moon, of the art of necromancy for those who never learnt to let go, and of crossways, forever forcing people to choose, and she would laugh at the irony. Of course, Hecate was also a triplicate goddess, and to amuse herself, she would match them to each of her forms. Bellatrix was the crone, bitter and old, or perhaps the seductress, depending on the literature, but it didn't matter, because both was broken and empty, like her sister with a deadened heart. Narcissa was like the maiden, foolishly naïve and vain, frozen in her youth and never growing wise. As for herself, she was like the wife, perhaps, or the mother, except she was a wife of no one, a mother of no child.

7. Narcissa, unlike her two sisters, never quite took pride in her family. The glory and status was something that she basked in, perhaps, enjoying the respect and life that it provided her with, but she didn't like the inexorable darkness that haunted her every step, like it did the house, being the true master of their ancestral home. There was a terrible, heavy smell of must and staleness, as though the house had already begun to rot with the people inside, and she hated it. She wasn't like Bellatrix, who reveled in the land between dream and reality; in the twilight between darkness and light, or Andromeda, who held her grace regardless of the shifting shadows in the corners or the hidden eyes on the walls that seemed to follow them wherever they went. She was a flower, and she wilted without light.

8. Andomeda didn't know what possessed her to leave the house, but one day, everything suddenly seemed to be too much; the walls felt as though they were slowly closing in on her, burying her alive, her parents' words meaningless and heavy as stones, her dresses richly decorated but faded, like a shroud for a dead girl; her jewelry like the chains that entrapped her namesake. It was so easy, for her to make him fall in love with her, steal out one night, and then she was free. She didn't have a prince to save her, but she could always save herself. Not that she loved him, but it didn't matter. Andromeda Tonks, perhaps, didn't have the twisted grandeur of Bellatrix Lestrange, or the icy poise of Narcissa Malfoy, but it was a name of her own making, that was all that mattered.

9. The structural model of the psyche was a fascinating thing, because any human being, however mad or sane, could be reduced to same thing. The id was the baser instinct, something made purely of a drive to survive and a wild, untameable state of being that was powerful beyond imagination when let loose. The super-ego was the internalization of knowledge or social mores, something deeply ingrained of teachings of what was right or wrong, without heed of moderation. And the ego was the mediator, the one that chose a compromise between both to form a rationale decision. Without the ego, the id would be allowed to run freely and cause destruction to anything in its way. The super-ego would build itself a world of its own, sticking rigidly to what it knew and unwilling to break out of the fragile web of illusions that it had created. But without any of the three, none could function properly.

10. (Such was the fate of the sisters Black.)


End file.
